Labels: self released
Review by: Oli Saunders
It turns out that up until now I have not spent anywhere near enough time listening to modern shoegaze. I’m going to label it as such rather than calling it lo-fi indie rock, since it seems to have a strong connection with the 80s sound, not least through all the youtube music videos that just play old home recordings and act like they are original. Anyway, it’s the Beach Fossils / Wild Nothing kind of sound that has appeared and, seemingly, become relatively popular. On this record, Foxes In Fiction do a really good job at it, utilising the tricks of the trade – a guitar playing clean notes, a keyboard playing very basic underlying and, most importantly, someone murmuring indecipherably into a microphone with reverb turned up to 11. ‘March 2011’ is a slow opening that sets the scene, leading into ‘Into The Fields’ which makes me think of the sort of music that will play when I die and float up to heaven, as seen in Ghost. Y’know what, it’s all pretty snail paced and tranquil, and this works; I’m sure some of it sounds like other bands, but there’s enough else going on to make it unique. ‘Shadow’s Song’ has a wonderful chorus but the cream of the crop is the title track, which is as good as anything this genre has produced.
9th February 2017